


hospital bed crawl

by gingerfrost



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 07:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4011841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerfrost/pseuds/gingerfrost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Although Matthew imagined being something to Will, really something important, he was happy just to be a tool. After all, tools are useful. They have a purpose. To be touched by Will even for that briefest moment justifies his life.</p>
<p>(Matthew recovers in the hospital after his little errand fails. Only from the broken ribs, though.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	hospital bed crawl

He doesn't die from the bullet. But now and again he wishes he did.

They stitch him up, resurrect him when the FBI comes calling asking after an explanation for Hannibal hanging and bloody. Matthew, bleary with the drugs but pin-sharp in his devotion as always, deflects the questions the same as his ribs did the bullet. Crawford looks at him sideways when Matthew drawls it to him like he'd rehearsed: he'd listened in on Will, heard him dripping venom at Lecter, planned, executed, failed, all of his own accord. But he's _damn_ good at lying -- he has to be -- and the coverup flies.

He won't put Will Graham in the mental hospital again. Hannibal won't either, he thinks, for his own reasons. The cell is reserved for him now. (He wonders if he can request the same one, sleep on the same stiff cot Will's body filled up before him. If it will still smell like Will, behind the antiseptic of the hospital competing with the sweat and piss of the inmates.)

In the meantime, with the Damocles sword of his broken ribs and the lung they'd pierced, this sterile little inpatient room is his jail.

Matthew fades in and out of consciousness. Is Will upset with him, he wonders, although it stings worse than the fucking ribs to think of it. He had been close, Hannibal's blood spilling out onto the floor and eyes hazy as his breath came shorter and shorter and shorter, but he had to gloat. Had to revel. He couldn't help it. After so long tucked up neat and airtight into his little act (dull everyday Matthew Brown, all slurred words and obedience, not terribly bright but industrious) the freedom had gone to his head. Will had given him that, the freedom. His sight stripping away the carefully practiced mask and letting Matthew be something so much brighter, more glorious, greater. A killer -- an artist with blood, bone, and death.

But Will apathetic is more likely than Will disappointed with him. Matthew's sure he's lost in locking horns with his devil again. He'll be okay. Matthew has looked both of them in the eyes now, the Ripper and his hunter, and he would bet on Will. And Matthew -- he supposes he'll rot away in the same hospital he haunted.

He doesn't mind too much, being forgotten. He was a bit part in Hannibal and Will's rivalry, the dark, vast thing between them, not quite love and not quite hate. And yet -- although Matthew imagined being something to Will, really something important -- he was happy just to be a tool. After all, tools are useful. They have a purpose. To be touched by Will even for that briefest moment justifies his life.

But tools are also discarded, once they're broken, he thinks, idly tracing a finger along the thin hospital carpets.

Unlike the loneliness before, he has memories of Will to cling to now. Not just newspaper clippings or Lounds' scathing articles and her inelegant pictures of Will grimacing at crime scenes, but real preserved memories of him breathing and living. How he sounds when he talks (that low dark growl in his throat when he's purposeful, and his little self-deprecating chuckle). How he moves (haltingly, like he'll break something or be broken). How he looks at _Matthew,_ that one moment when their eyes met and he saw right through to everything he was.

Addled by the drugs and the pain and self-pity and the consuming regret, it's easy to pretend them bigger, into a life, and disappear inside. His first fantasy is the same as his old ones. Before he'd met Will, heard him, seen him, known he was no natural killer but had grown that way (though he'll never know the extent, that it had been cultivated carefully in him, like bonsai). Matthew had hoped that he would take him under his wing, show him how to make art like he did. To take people and split them open and use their guts to paint the world that much more beautiful.

Maybe he could still do that. But Will is something different than a born murderer like Matthew. He loves him all the more for it, for the way he's nothing and everything. Will encompasses it all.

Maybe he would teach Matthew how to fish. Maybe Matthew would hate it. Maybe they would play at domesticity, settle down with Will's dogs (which Matthew knows by name, abusing his invisibility as an orderly to listen to him, he's not guilty about it in the least because bits and scraps of Will are all he's ever had).

Maybe they would go out together, though, now and again, and kill someone who deserved it. Matthew isn't given to vigilantism, but he's seen the leaning in Will. He could get used to it, so long as there was Will, bloodied, with that fucking _look_ on his face. The dark cast over him, like a thundercloud rolling into his head and out the eyes.

More likely, Will leaves him to rot in the hospital, first this one for his broken ribs and then the one for his broken psyche. He never sees him again, never hears of him again. Wouldn't be allowed. Might impede his _recovery_ , as though he could ever recover from being what he is. As though he could ever recover from Will.

Matthew will get better from the chest wound. His heart is far more fucked.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song of the same name by The Hush Sound.


End file.
